My children have always been fascinated with making toys. They have tried making things out of cardboard, yarn, wire, wood. Some of the best items they have produced are made by using a simple ‘fake’ paper mache’ technique.

Here’s How it is Done:

1. First crumble some paper up into the shape you desire. Use a little masking tape to hold it in place. (We like to use newspaper.)
2. Cover the entire piece with masking tape. Smooth the masking tape out as much as possible. The piece must be covered in tape with no newspaper showing.
3. Paint your sculpture with tempera paints and decorate it with other craft accessories like rocks, feathers, eyes, ribbons, etc.

Here’s a sample of an environment my daughter made for dinosaurs!



Easy, No Mess Paper Mache’ Dinosaur Environment!

I LOVE Fabri-tac for these types of projects

Fabri-tac is a type of glue that works just like hot glue (instantly) without the heat! So it is GREAT for kid projects like this one where there may be heavy pieces to glue down. White glue can’t handle the weight of some things and the wait time is painful for children. Fabri-tac works almost instantly and really handles heavy, crazy shaped objects just as well as hot glue!


Good Luck! I would love to see your Easy, No Mess Paper Mache’ projects! Email pictures of them to me here Veronica/Hands On Learning 4 All!

Building a Rube Goldberg Machine

This is the marble run we own.

What is a Rube Goldberg Machine? Take a look at this classic video.

How to start:

Get a bunch of building materials together. Tinker toys, pool noodles, marble tracks, books, tape (masking and clear), wooden blocks, legos….you get the idea. Now watch the videos above and below and let your imagination start working. Start with a track of some kind and a ball. Most Rube Goldberg machines have a ball that runs on a track that triggers other elements to move along the path to get to the end.

Here’s another example from a commercial for Sharp’s Touch Wood Phone:

Here’s an idea for how to use a pool noodle as a track

A Little bit about Rube Goldberg

Excerpted from: http://www.rubegoldberg.com/about
“Rube Goldberg (1883-1970) was a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, sculptor and author.
Reuben Lucius Goldberg (Rube Goldberg) was born in San Francisco on July 4, 1883. After graduating from the University of California Berkeley with a degree in engineering, Rube went on to work as an engineer for the City of San Francisco Water and Sewers Department.

After six months Rube shifted gears and left the Sewers Department to become an office boy in the sports department of a San Francisco newspaper. While there he began to submit drawings and cartoons to the editor until he was finally published. Rube soon moved from San Francisco to New York to work for the Evening Mail drawing daily cartoons. This led to syndication and a national presence – and the rest is history.

A founding member of the National Cartoonist Society, a political cartoonist and a Pulitzer Prize winner, Rube was a beloved national figure as well as an often-quoted radio and television personality during his sixty year professional career.

Best known for his “inventions”, Rube’s early years as an engineer informed his most acclaimed work. A Rube Goldberg contraption – an elaborate set of arms, wheels, gears, handles, cups and rods, put in motion by balls, canary cages, pails, boots, bathtubs, paddles and live animals – takes a simple task and makes it extraordinarily complicated. He had solutions for How To Get The Cotton Out Of An Aspirin Bottle, imagined a Self-Operating Napkin, and created a Simple Alarm Clock – to name just a few of his hilariously depicted drawings. ”

I hope this gives you some great ideas to make your own Rube Goldberg Machine. I would love to see your inventions. You can send your videos of your Rube Goldberg Machine to Veronica/Hands On Learning 4 All

Step 1:
Cut the plastic gallon container just below the handle.
Step 2:
Fill the bottom of the container with soil about 1″ high.
Step 3:
Label the toilet roll tubes with the seeds that they will contain.
Step 4:
Push the toilet roll tubes into the soil to help them stand tall.
Step 5:
Fill the tubes with soil (don’t have to be to neat here the overflow will just fill the base of the container a bit more.)
Step 6:
Plant your seeds into their corresponding tubes.
Step 7:
Water gently. Place the top half of the carton back on top of the bottom half to create the ‘dome’ of your terrarium. Leave the lid off if the seeds remain too moist or screw it on to maintain more moisture.

Watch the seeds grow. We started ours 2 weeks ago and they are doing very well. Some are ready to be planted into larger containers. I would love to hear about how your kiddos do with their seed terrariums!

I host a book club on a monthly basis for a group of homeschooling kids ages 4-13. We read one book each month from the Magic Tree House book series by Mary Pope Osborne. This month’s discussion will be about the Midnight on the Moon book from the series. I usually plan a discussion of the book and a craft or activity based on the book’s theme. This month our craft/activity will be launching stomp rockets.

Here is how to make the ‘launch’ pad and the rocket for the activity if you want to build one on your own.

As I am working on getting together materials for our upcoming school year I started ‘thumbing’ through Pinterest for some ideas. If you haven’t visited this site yet you MUST. I have gotten tons of great ideas for decorating my home, meals to make, crafts to try and –of course– homeschooling ideas.

I have always done a morning routine with my kids that involved base ten blocks, money, and a hundred chart that went with the calendar date. But each little segment seemed so disjointed. I wanted a way to display all of the results. I found tons of great ideas on Pinterest but none of them quite matched my needs. So I created my own chart using just the elements that were relevant to my morning routine.

By using this chart with my hands on manipulatives (real money, base ten blocks, tally sticks) I will create a visual tie-in to our morning math routine and hopefully make the language/math connection stronger. I love morning math because it only takes about ten minutes to complete but covers so many basic math concepts. Hope you enjoy your free download!

I have been spending the last week organizing our materials for homeschool in the fall. I decided to create a new workspace for my children because our old ‘art table’ was getting a bit too small for my 10yr old. (It was designed for a toddler!) I had 2 plastic 3 drawer bins that are on rollers. All I needed to buy was an 8ft long board at Lowes. This board was prefabricated out of particle board and already had a rounded plastic edge adhered to it. It was meant to use as shelving but when placed on top of my two storage bins it makes a perfect work space for 3 children.

The best thing about the desk is that it cost me a total of $12 to make. Another perk to this desk is it rolls. So I can easily move it from one wall to the other if I choose to redecorate. Or if guests come into town I can easily disassemble the whole thing and put a bed in it’s place.

You may notice the bulletin boards that hang on the wall in front of each child’s work space. I went to a craft store and priced bulletin boards that were 1/3 the size of these. The price was a whopping $14 each. So I decided to make these and save myself some cash. For a total of $9 each I made these bulletin boards that are 3 times bigger and in custom colors! That’s a savings of $15! Here’s how I did it.

You will need foam craft board, (I doubled mine up so I can use thumbtacks in them.) Dense foam sheets, (I needed 2 to cover my board.) Colored duct tape, Fabri-tac glue, a staple gun and scissors.

My boards came in a two pack covered in plastic sheeting to hold them together. I left the plastic sheeting on and glued my colored foam directly to the boards.

Cover the edges of the board with your colored duct tape. I put a strip of the colored duct tape down the center of the board to conceal the seam between the two foam sheets. I like the idea of two sections of the board so the kids have one half for school and the other half for home.

I glued the foam can holder onto the board on the duct tape in the center and then used the staple gun to really secure the cup holder to the board because I know this section will really get used taking pencils/pens in and out of it.

That’s it….now each child has his/her own work space and I did the whole area for under $30! Yay!